Little Willie, Are you Okay?

Today was the weekly BIG EAST Coaches Conference call for
men's basketball.League coaches have to
call in to take questions from the media on a bi-weekly basis.So Coach Thompson was off last week, but back
on again this week.When he was on a couple
of weeks back, I transcribed his responses to post here, but he was on for a
very short time today, mainly because he only had one question asked.

The one question Coach Thompson was asked was about UConn
guard Kemba Walker, whom he coached with the United States Under-20 National
Team a couple of years ago.

Here was Coach's opening statement on the conference call
today...

"We went on the road and got two BIG EAST road wins and
so after having a difficult two week span, it's good to have a break. We have a
few days here to catch up on school. We look forward to playing St. John's, who
everyone knows beat us at the Garden a couple weeks ago."

And since I don't have much to report from the conference
call, I am including a link for the post-game video from the win over Seton Hall
on Tuesday.

I would have posted this immediately after the game, but
I was trying to catch a train home and the wireless connection on the Northeast
Regional Amtrak train left a bit to be desired.

So when I did get it posted on YouTube, the audio wasn't
great.Special thanks to Director of
Ticket Operations Steve Alleva for serving as my de facto cameraman while we're
on the road.I need to look into some
of the settings on the flip cam to see if I've messed up some of the audio
settings.

If you look closely at the video from the Seton Hall
game, you'll notice Austin Freeman and Julian Vaughn looking down at a reporter
in the front row.Julian pointed it out
to me in the press conference, but what they were looking at was Brian Lewis
from the New York Post - whose head is visible in the video - transcribing Coach
Thompson's press conference.Brian was
holding his laptop in his right hand and he was transcribing using his left
index finger.It was rather impressive.

Speaking of impressive, if you go back to the Rutgers
post-game video, you'll hear music at about the 9:30 mark of the press
conference.I was fishing through my bag
for a box score to check something.Coach Thompson asked me afterward what ring tone that was, assuming my
cell phone went off, but what happened was that after I put my bag down, it
fell over and hit the play button on my iPod, allowing "Miss Murder" from AFI
to blast through the press conference.It also gave Coach the chance to joke with me.If you hear him say, "Little Willie, are you
okay?," that was directed toward me.Coach's father refers to Senior Director of Communications Bill
Shapland, my boss, as Willie, and has taken to calling me "Little Willie."

A few more notes from post-game Seton Hall

·Four players scored in double figures, the
seventh time this season the team has done so.

·Senior guard Chris Wright played in his 100th
career game

·Chris handed out six assists in the game, giving
him 394 for his career and moving him past Fred Brown for seventh all-time.

·Austin Freeman's 28 points gave him 1,548 for
his career; he moved past Allen Iverson for 13th all-time in scoring at
Georgetown and is tied with Brandon Bowman for 12th place all-time.

·Senior forward Julian Vaughn blocked four shots
against Seton Hall, giving him 40 this season and 107 for his career at
Georgetown.

oIf
you add the 21 he had as a freshman at Florida State, Julian moved past Jeff
Green for eighth all-time at GU